


And in the flood of morning light — spilling out across your room — you say the words will get there soon

by little_fella (na_shao)



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pets, Post-Grindelwald, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 05:54:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13093800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/na_shao/pseuds/little_fella
Summary: It starts when he visits Theseus in London, a few months into 1926.“Thes?”“Hmm?”“Your brother’sbig catkeeps bothering me.”





	And in the flood of morning light — spilling out across your room — you say the words will get there soon

**Author's Note:**

> Graves-centric piece / Thesival written for anon, on tumblr, who asked for “Five times one of Newt’s creatures bothered Percival Graves and the one time the man came on his own.”
> 
> I hope you all enjoy this! Going back to hide in the batcave, now, as usual.

_**** _

 

 ******_1._ **

It starts when he visits Theseus in London, a few months into 1926.

“Thes?”

“Hmm?”

“Your brother’s  _big cat_ keeps bothering me.”

Theseus’s head perks up from his documents and arches an eyebrow at his best friend. “Ellie?”

“I don’t know,” Graves growls, frustrated, throwing his hands up in the air. “The kneazle _right there,_ ” and he points at the amount of fluff curled up in a ball on his chair in Theseus’ office. “It keeps following me everywhere!”

 _Mercy Lewis does he hate being plucked out in the morning,_  falling back to earth in the daylight opening up to him and the soft rise of clouds and bright flashes of day.

“This kneazle is a  _she_  and her name is Ellie,” Theseus answers evenly. “I bottlefed her when I was a teenager.”

“You did?” Percival asks with a frown, and maybe he’s faking interest, though— maybe,  _maybe,_ he’s actually interested in hearing about this.

“I did,” Theseus replies, his voice still a constant— no curve and no sine wave. “She lost her mother when she was barely a week old and Newt found her all alone during a stroll in the woods behind our grandmother’s cottage. We didn’t think she’d make it.” And flashes curl up before his eyelids at that, reminders of her pulse weak and erratic, little paws trembling and fur covered in fleas.

Percival purses his lips. “And here she is, sleeping on my important documents. How am I supposed to work,  _exactly?_  We have Grindelwald to catch and maps to study—”

“I don’t know. You are the Director of MACUSA, after all. You should be able to think about something, right?” Theseus says as a deep, sarcastic smirk spreads upon his peachy-pale lips where little freckles are scattered and dancing under the orange lights.

“I am a  _trained Auror,_ not a cat breeder!”

“She’s a  _kneazle_  and she hates being called a  _cat,_ ” Theseus adds in softly, sort of singing the words with an air of utter amusement that makes Graves boil. In retaliation, Graves tries to shoo the animal away but Ellie only curls up tighter around herself, her silver fur glowing in the descending afternoon light of London’s gray day.

A vowel escaping Theseus’ mouth and she opens a cold, blue eye to him.

She has the sharpest teeth when she yawns and shows the pink flesh painted in there in volumes of skinny bumps and hard bones.

“Ellie,” he murmurs as he approaches her, fingers opening and spreading like a rose blooming, “come here.”

She waves her tail, seemingly so very pleased with his offer and soft smile, and she starts purring when Theseus strokes a hand down her furry back. Reaching out and ruffling her ears, he brings his fingers up to her head to scratch it, cooing, “don’t you worry about that ruthless yankee, my darling.“

“Yeah, go on,” Percival grumbles, pride wounded as he turns his back on the scene before him, “ _show off with your cat skills,_  Scamander. I don’t care.”

Little did he know that he would end up caring, soon enough.

 

* * *

 

_**2.** _

His opponent crouches in a corner of his pillow and holds his gaze easily, blinking and pawing at his place in bed— kneading the blankets with a blissed-out look on her face.

Percival groans loudly. “What do you want  _again?_  Wasn’t this afternoon enough? Go bother Theseus.”

She cautiously shuffles to the left, sprawling even more on the fluffy pillow, eyes unwavering, the clearest, coldest of blues— a stare that could melt granite and slash through pure diamond like butter.

Frightening— and  _deadly._

A long, unwanted shiver runs down his spine.

If he winds up sleeping on Theseus’ right side of the bed, it’s absolutely  _unfortunate_  and  _definitely not_  because of Ellie.

_Absolutely not._

 

* * *

 

_**3.** _

Theseus visits him in New York a few weeks later in order to meet up with his team of Aurors and Seraphina to plan out the Grindelwald search properly.

They call it off for the day and manage to Apparate back home to Percival’s brownstone when they find—

A big, silverish kneazle looking back at them in shades of ocean blue.

Ellie meows softly at him from where she is perched on his shelves stacked with books, in his living room.

“You’ve got to be  _fucking kidding me,_ ” he grunts at Theseus who only shoots him a bright, stellar smile in return, and Graves glares darkly at the object of his displeasure.

“I know you two sparked up  _a very special friendship_  when you were in London last month, so I brought her with me.”

Percival snorts, heavy sarcasm settling in his guts and licking its way up to his throat. “You shouldn’t have, really. And how did you even manage to pass customs with her?”

He carefully schools the British Auror’s features before scrutinising the creature again even as he wills himself not to fold— because  _she might be beautiful,_  but he doesn’t want cat hair everywhere on his things,  _come on._

“Put on my most charming smile, of course,” Theseus singsongs, grinning lips stretching and eyes sparkling. “And Ellie is the most beautiful thing in the world, isn’t she? Aren’t you, my darling?” he coos at her, and Percival rolls his eyes.

He sees Theseus choke back a giggle, lips pursing before they relax back into his coy smile  _(fuck this, that smile— that makes Percival’s heart thump)._

Ellie moves a little, meows; somehow seems to be waiting.

Every tendon in Percival’s neck is standing out beneath his skin.

“Maybe you should try, I don’t know…  _being nice to her? And petting her?_  A drastic change of mood for Percival Graves, I know, but I’m sure she will appreciate it.”

Graves gives him an anguished look, grumbles a “ _I am nice,_ you’re just terrible,” while Theseus shoots him a long look and nods at his fingers; Percival eventually reaches out for the silver creature—

And pats her awkwardly on the head, moving his palm to cradle her fluffy cheek.

She  _purrs._

Soft and quiet.

Theseus is  _beaming,_  the fucker.

 

* * *

 

_**4.** _

Percival is sleeping soundly in the curve of his arm, fierce, dark strands of hair spilling like gasoline all over the sheets.

_Together again._

It feels—

 _Weird,_  somehow.

But also very  _right,_  his side pressed against Percival’s, the memory of their lips biting at one another and teeth sinking into thighs still vivid.

He hadn’t forgotten the salt of Percival’s skin; the soft caress of his scars under his palms.

Could never forget these; and so why does he feel an ache in his chest now just thinking about that, about these things he has never been able to forget? Or perhaps he just clung to them to feel the tiniest of bit  _alive_  and not lost at sea—

Ashamed of his own loss of a man he has always loved.

_For so many years, you’ve been asleep in every part of me and all I want now, selfishly, is to wake you up— wake you up everywhere as you’ve woken up the very sleeping cells of my being._

The drift and drowse of immersion.

_Again._

_“And I love you, I can’t stop that—”_

_“I love you too,” Percival breathes, nearly choking at the pleading in Theseus’ voice—_

Lost in his thoughts  _(battling nightmares and isolation),_  Theseus barely realises Ellie has walked into the  _(their?)_  bedroom and prepares herself to jump at Percival’s feet.

He laughs quietly.

“You love him  _that much,_  don’t you?”

_Just as much as I do._

 

* * *

 

_**5.** _

She nuzzles at his hand as it slips off the quilt and off the bed the first night he’s back home after spending months in the hospital—

But Percival is a tense, black comma of himself, completely arched in alarm and utter distress; and he stiffens, intense, contracted, at the kneazle’s touch, her nose wet and cold, reminding him of that time he got drowned—

Drowned and drenched and body open at  _its base_  and  _dead._

The toxic everlastingness of lungs almost filled to the brim with liquid that reduces everything to a toneless aspiration  _(the crush of chlorinated water)._

“What—” but his voice is raspy, catching up through the mucous membrane of his throat. It takes him a while to find it back out there as Ellie keeps still, unmoving. “What are you doing here?” he murmurs at the darkness more than the creature; he knows she cannot answer, obviously, but words need to be thrown at the night instead of staying inside of him. “Did— did Thes—” and Mercy Lewis,  _fucking stutter, fuck this—_

She nuzzles his hand again.

Liquid eyes and this slender needle bursting with memories, like fractals, repeating  _(the sharp, hissing pain of his broken foot, spilling his limbs onto the hardwood of his own floor as he’s being tortured)—_

Percival cries softly in the crook of his elbow as Ellie feels for a pulse against the thin, purple-bruised flesh of his wrist, a warming touch; a feathery gust that spins and stops circling to die as an ember, a tremor.

 

* * *

 

_**5+1.** _

Graves’ hand is shaking as he strokes Ellie’s back, small molehills of hurt breaching the surface of his skin at every turn, every gesture, every breath he takes.

A last shudder of lungs that slips past his lips— he’s a thing of dirt and water and oxygen marked by thinking and reacting, after all, and there’s an impulse to breathe in and out, breathe in and out as he reaches out for the kneazle with trembling fingers.

For once, he’s the one who came for her; in the dead of night, his feet carried him to her sleeping form on the couch.

_Bear the bruising now, bear it, bear it, bear it; the ache swelling and spitting itself out of your pores and through your severed veins._

He hesitantly lifts his hand to avoid making the creature attack him, but elegant long-limbed Ellie unfurls herself into something majestic and sniffs forward, inviting him in; her bare neck thrown at the sky and her eyes closing again, as if listening closely to something— the disordered rhythm of the man’s magic, the scars pulsing with dark magic, the turmoil rooted so deeply inside his pink-red muscles.

She hisses at the nightmare creatures until he falls asleep against her; until he is hoarse with tension and exhausted of days spent fighting his own demons.

In the morning, under the gaze of noon that is shedding its white light in the living room and spilling its guts out, Theseus finds them curled up tightly around each other in a warm, protective embrace, Ellie purring softly against Percival’s chest which doesn’t vibrate anymore with a nervous anxiety— like a spell, like a protection; something to hold onto and to never let go of.

Theseus ends up kneeling in front of the couch, resting his chin on his forearms while he’s watching Ellie open a curious eye at the slight movements of the air, her mouth seemingly swirling into a smile.

“Thank you for taking care of him,” her master whispers very gently with a fond smile painted on his freckled lips. “You did a great job, my darling.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> You can scream at me on tumblr: angryzilla.tumblr.com
> 
> I don't bite. I promise.


End file.
